


It's A Fine Life

by Snowblazehollyleafstar



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Oliver! - Bart
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 09:40:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21847576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowblazehollyleafstar/pseuds/Snowblazehollyleafstar
Summary: AU, canon fusion. When Lyra escapes from Mrs Coulter's, she runs into a little boy called Oliver, and soon she's living the life of a London street urchin as well as anyone could. But her destiny hasn't forgotten her, and her importance could put all of her newfound friends in danger...
Kudos: 1





	It's A Fine Life

**Author's Note:**

> So I know I should be working on one of my other projects, but this plotbunny just seized hold of my imagination and wouldn't let go until I'd written it out. I have no clue where this is going or when it's going to update. Hope you like it!

Lyra ducked into the evening crowd and ran, dashing across one street after another until she reached something that looked like a marketplace. She was in a different part of London now, one she hadn’t seen before, and it had a whole different set of people to the suited gentlemen and elegant young ladies ferried around in their anbaric cars she’d seen before.

These reminded her of some of the Oxford locals: much poorer than the guests at the cocktail party she and Pan had escaped from, but looking happier and more cheerful to be going about their daily business. If she had known London as she knew the streets of Oxford, she would have been right at home, but here she still felt like a stranger.

She also felt hungry: she hadn’t eaten a thing since lunch earlier that day, and needed food. She had money (a few gold coins) but she got the sense it might seem a bit odd to be paying with gold for an apple or a bread roll, and besides, she might need the money for later.

“We shouldn’t steal,” said Pan, a sparrow on her shoulder, but Lyra shook her head. “Who cares? It’s only one apple. It won’t harm anyone.”

“If you get caught, it will.”

“So we won’t get caught,” she said decisively. Pan was still sceptical, but he couldn’t do anything about it because she was already edging casually towards the apple stand, smiling sweetly and keeping her eyes firmly fixed on someone else in the crowd until she was close enough to reach out and grab an apple.

“Oi!” yelled the vendor. “You!”

But Lyra was already running as quickly as she could in the opposite direction, weaving in and out of the crowd, out of sight and uncatchable, until she collided with – 

She stopped and took a step back to catch her breath and look at him properly.

He was a boy, about a couple of years younger than her, with light brown hair and a thin, pale face. He held his trembling mouse-dæmon in the palm of one hand.

“Hey,” she said. “Sorry I ran into you like that, I weren’t looking where I was going. What you doing out here on your own?”  
“Running away,” he said quietly.

“I’m running away too,” she said, smiling. “Who you running from?”

“A funeral place,” said the boy. “I was working there, and the man I was working for insulted my mother. I attacked him and then I had to run, because he was going to call the police. Before that I lived in a workhouse, but I was sold because I asked for more food. I’m just so hungry…”

Lyra’s heart melted instantly. His story sounded like one she might have made up, but she knew the truth when she saw it and she was overwhelmed with pity for him. “Here,” she said. “Have this apple. I can get another. What’s your name?”

“My name’s Oliver. Oliver Twist.” He reached out and cautiously took the apple from her.

“I’m Lyra,” she said, smiling. “Come on, let’s go find some place to go. And I’ll tell you who I run away from.”

They set off through the crowd in a random direction, Oliver slowly munching his apple and their dæmons sniffing each other and play-fighting as they went.

“So the lady I run away from, she were called Mrs Coulter, and she was… I thought she was nice, ‘cause she was beautiful and she were good to me, but… you ever heard of the Gobblers?”

Oliver shook his head.

“The Gobblers, right…” she began to weave together a story. “Well… let me start at the beginning… one day in London… it could have been right here, in this very marketplace… children began to disappear. And it was always children, never adults or old people. Always children. No-one ever saw them again, once they’d vanished, and the people what took ‘em, they’re called the Gobblers.

“Some people, they say it’s a huge scary man with red eyes, what comes and hypnotises them so they can’t run away, and some say there’s more than one, a man and a woman… and there en’t no-one knows what they do with the children.

“Now I used ter live in Oxford, at Jordan College. My mum and dad, they died in an airship accident when I was a baby, so my uncle, Lord Asriel, who’s an explorer, he’s been to the North loads of times and he’s gonna take me with him one day, he put me at Jordan College and that’s where I grew up.”

As Lyra spoke, they wandered slowly along the street, trying to look as if they were perfectly at home and knew exactly where they were going. Oliver was staring up at Lyra, wide-eyed, overwhelmed by her description of a world he’d never heard of.

“An’ I used to play on the streets with the other college children, and we’d fight the gyptians’ and the brick-burners’ kids, and we trounced ‘em every time. Then one day… the Gobblers came to Oxford.” Lyra hesitated, enjoying his terrified-but-excited expression and the feeling of captivating her audience. 

“An’ I didn’t know anything about it, ‘cept kids started vanishing. Jessie Reynolds from the old Oxford Market, Billy Costa – he’s a gyptian boy… and then they took my best friend, Roger, what worked in the Jordan kitchens. He just vanished one day, and I en’t never seen him since. 

“Then the day after he left, this woman came to Jordan, her name was Mrs Coulter, and she was a Scholar but she was ever so beautiful and interesting and clever, and she had this golden monkey for a dæmon…”

“Lyra loved her at once,” interjected Pan. “She wouldn’t shut up about her, it was Mrs Coulter this, Mrs Coulter that…”

“And then she took me away from Jordan to live with her in London – as her personal assistant. And I learnt loads of things, and she said she was going to take me North but she never did… then she was having this cocktail party, and I was wearing an outfit she didn’t like and I wanted to keep it… and she – she – her dæmon, he just pounced on Pan and hurt him – and we knew we had to get away.

“But before that, there was the cocktail party, and I overheard these people, and they were talking about something called the General Oblation Board and this woman, I think she was a journalist, she told me Mrs Coulter was the one running the whole thing, and the Oblation Board is the Gobblers, they’re the same thing, ‘cause it comes from the initials. So, I left.”

Oliver seemed to not quite know what to say. By this time, they had reached a main street, and a carriage with horses rolled slowly by. They both stared at it, but for different reasons: Lyra was wondering who the people inside were, and why they had a carriage rather than an anbaric car, and where they were going, but Oliver was just overwhelmed by it all. 

“What you staring at?”

They spun round: another boy, maybe fourteen or fifteen, stood watching them curiously, his fox-dæmon by his side.

“Ain’t you never seen a toff?”

“Yeah,” said Lyra indignantly, “I seen plenty of rich people. I used to live with one, you know.”

She waited for him to show some kind of interest, but he didn’t, merely saying “I suppose you want some place to sleep tonight, don’t you? Are you accommodated?” He said that last word in a high-pitched mimic of a “toff” as he described them.

“No,” said Lyra. “We en’t. But how do I know you en’t a Gobbler?”

“Gobblers?” he scoffed. “They’re just a fairy story.”

“They en’t!” said Lyra hotly. “They’re real, I know ‘cause I’ve met them.”

The boy looked sceptical. “I have accommodation, if you want it,” he said, sounding rather put out. “There’s a certain place, and I know of a respectable old gentleman, as lives there, who’ll give you lodgings for nothing. And never ask for the change. That is if any other gentleman ‘e knows introduces yer.”

“Who is the respectable old gentleman?” asked Oliver.

“Mister Fagin. By the way, if I’m introducing you to Fagin, I’d better know who you are.”

“Lyra Belacqua,” she said, trying to decide whether he could be trusted. “An’ this is Oliver. All right, we’ll come with you. But if you’re Gobblers, my uncle, he’ll know about it and he’ll kill every last one of you if you dare touch me.”

Already she felt free of the stuffy, formal, restrictive world of Mrs Coulter: London might not be her home, but she was back in her element.

“I like you,” said the boy admiringly. “You’ve got some nerve, all right. My name is Jack Dawkins, better known among my more intimate friends as the Artful Dodger.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mister Dawkins,” said Oliver quietly.

“Come to think of it,” added the Dodger after a pause, “I en’t got no intimate friends. But still, what’s the difference? You’re coming with me.”

“Are you sure Mr Fagin won’t mind?”

“Mind?” scoffed the Dodger. “’E’s practically running a home for people like us, what don’t have no other place to go.”

His offer seemed almost too good to be true, but Lyra wasn’t afraid. If there was a catch, she could run, she’d be able to get away and try something else. “Let’s go meet this Fagin, then,” she said, smiling. “What are we waiting for?”

“Nothing,” replied the Dodger, and set off down the street, whistling as he went.


End file.
